at planters, we put fresh roawhich has its drawbacks.an, guys, know anything about this missing inventory? wasn't me! the cheeks don't lie, chet... irresistibly planters. we're going to get an answer to whether or not the trump campaign was surveilled, was a warrant ever requested, was one issued, and i hope to be able to answer the question is there an active investigation on the criminal side of the trump campaign regarding ties to russia. >> good morning, and welcome to "a.m. joy."

that was senator lindsey graham this week asking the big questions that we all want to know about regarding donald trump. number one, is the fbi investigating the relationship between trump and russia? and if so, did that investigation lead to a fisa warrant to monitor donald trump's phone calls or those of any of his campaign team. and could that be what's behind trump's unfounded claim that president obama tapped his phones in trump tower? the fbi told senator graham that they would respond to his questions in a classified letter sometime next week. but he just might get beaten to the punch by his congressional colleagues in the house, because on monday fbi director jim comey will be testifying at a house intelligence committee on russian interference in the 2016 elections. leaders of the house committee have been making plenty of their own demands on the fbi for answers about trump's wiretapping claims. so monday's hearing will be the first time that we all hear publicly what jim comey has to say. joining me now is representative

adam smith, ranking member of the house armed services committee. congressman smith, what do you expect jim comey to be able to say? can he tell us yes or no whether or not there is a criminal investigation of the trump campaign for ties to russia? >> i believe that he can. he can't tell us the details of that. you know, they can say we can't comment on an ongoing investigation. i'd be real surprised, though, because we've heard from the intelligence community and from many others that there was no wiretapping of anybody in the trump campaign. look, i think this whole thing started because of the phone conversation that michael flynn got caught up in. but what people seem to misunderstand is they weren't tapping michael flynn's phone. far more logical is that they were tapping the phone of the russian that he was speaking to. so i expect that fbi director comey will say, you know, there's been wiretap of that. whether or not they're investigating at this point the connections of the trump campaign to the russian interference with our election,

i think he can comment on that without going into detail. and i don't know the answer to that so i look forward to what he says on monday. >> so we now know and it is now public information, yahoo! news has reported that moscow, that flynn was paid $45,000 by rt for the talk that he did in russia, and of course rt is russian state-owned television. paid him $45,386 to fly to moscow and speak on this tenth anniversary celebration back in december of 2015. we have the pay stub that shows the money that flynn was paid. we also know that he was making money from some other sources, including turkey. does the fact that it's public information now that michael flynn was obviously on the payroll for russian state television mean that now we can put more information into the public domain? we know that comey put lots of information into the public domain about hillary clinton's e-mails. should he be required to do the same when it comes to michael flan, paul manafort, carter page and the others?

>> just for accuracy say, michael flynn was not on the payroll. he was paid to appear. paid to give a speech. which is, you know, questionable given the role that he sought as national security advisor. the bigger issues here beyond what happened, you know, with the trump campaign, the fact that the russians interfered in our election is a huge issue that we all ought to be concerned about, including president trump and everybody in the white house. the fact that russia is in fact organizing a coordinated campaign to influence elections across europe in an effort to push countries away from nato and away from the eu, the fact that russia is in an ongoing effort to do this should be, you know, priority number one is to figure out what are they doing, how can we stop them, how can we respond to that as they're trying to underminus and our allies. so i think we need to focus on that issue as a starting point and figure out what the right policy is to respond to russia.

yes, if there was something going on with the trump campaign involvement with that, we need to investigate. at this point we don't know. but i think the question needs to be thoroughly investigated. >> thank you for that clarification, i think that's very important we make these distinctions very specific. your colleague, maxine waters, was on the program yesterday and i asked her whether she had faith in the house and senate investigations regarding russian interference in the u.s. election. let me let you listen to what she said. >> if they dig deep enough and do the type of investigations that they should be going that they're going to find that there was collusion. so i'm not convinced that the house committee is going to do very well with this, but i have more faith in the senate committee. >> and devin nunes is a long-time trump supporter. i think he might have been a surrogate for donald trump during the campaign. will these committees focus on the issue of russia? do you have confidence in devin

nunes' committee to do that or might we end up on a fishing expedition trying to find out if the former president of the united states committed a crime by wiretapping trump tower? >> i have a lot more confidence in the senate because both senator graham and senator mccain have been very outspoken on this issue and they have shown a willingness to take on president trump when he says or does outlandish things that deserve to be criticized. chairman nunes has really stepped away from this, so i don't have confidence in the house intelligence committee and i still think we need a special prosecutor to look into this so that we don't have to ask the questions of where the loyalties lie of certain republican members in the house and the senate. we can have an independent investigation to answer these questions. and all along the way, you know, they have totally ignored and representative chaffetz has been just as bad or worse than representative nunes in terms of, you know, not wanting to investigate the russian

involvement in the elections, but they want to investigate all these leak claims from the trump folks. they want to investigate now what president obama may have done to president trump. so they seem uninterested in the real crucial issue of russian interference in our election. >> yeah. well, very well put, representative adam smith, thank you very much for being here. appreciate it. >> thanks for the chance. appreciate it. while we're awaiting answers on the real news about trump and wiretapping, we got some answers on the fake news about trump and wiretapping this week. the trump administration soured the relationship with one of our closest allies again when sean spicer made this statement about the top spy agency in the uk. >> on fox news on march 14th, judge andrew napolitano made the following statement. three intelligence sources have informed fox news that president obama went outside of the chain of command. he didn't use the nsa, the cia, the fbi or the department of justice, he used gchk.

>> the gchk fired back calling napolitano's claims nonsense and ridiculous. now we know at least one of the people behind that ridiculous accusation. one of the sources was this guy, larry c. johnson, a former intelligence officer who shares napolitano's penchant for conspiracy theories, including one about the hoax about the existence of a supposed michelle obama making disparaging remarks about white people. joining me now are jonathan capehart, nira hawk, malcolm nance, author of "the plot to hack america" and naveed. thank you all for being here. i want to talk about larry johnson if i could just for a moment because one of the more disturbing things that we learned this week is that the white house is willing to, quote, not fox news' reporters,

but a commentator, judge napolitano from the show, who apparently was in turn quoting a conspiracy theorist larry c. johnson. let's listen to larry c. johnson on rt, russian state-run television, talking about supposed gchq collusion. >> if there was some collusion overseas with britain's own ghcq. and information gathered from ghcq was passed to john brennan and it was disseminated within the u.s. government. >> malcolm nance, how does it strike you that apparently the trump administration is getting its intelligence not from its intelligence services but from larry c. johnson, conspiracy theorist. >> yeah, and judge nepapolitano who donald trump kept praising in his commentary. very interesting thing about judge napolitano, this is twice he's been on the edge of the conspiracy theory that has cut to this russian hacking. the little known one was last

year in april he put out on fox news that the russians were having a debate at the vladimir putin level on releasing the 30,000 hacked hillary clinton e-mails, which he alleged were hacked. none of this would have happened. it would have been the highest level of intelligence collection in the united states. in july, donald trump repeated that same claim. judge napolitano got that information from russia today. he has a tendency to spin off all of these little russian claims, call them his own, working alongside larry johnson's ridiculousness and then turning that into these major controversies with donald trump praising him every step of the way. it's ludicrous. >> and naveed, is there any chance at all that the president of the united states, that barack obama could have called up, rung up gchq and asked them to wiretap trump tower? >> no. there's no way -- there's no other way to put it. look, this is just not -- it is

so unbelievable to have this discussion. i'm old enough to remember when we had a president that instilled confidence in our country. we were attacked by the russians during the 2016 elections. whether you believe they did so to help donald trump or not, they still attacked us. this is the time we need leadership. we have a president but we don't have a leader. this just goes to reinforce these crazy theories that are just unfounded. at this point either donald trump is knowingly lying about this stuff or he's just so incompetent that i don't know that he should be president. i have to agree with maxine waters, we are headed into a path that is going to end with a congressional sort of inquiry and probably some constitutional crisis because these claims are frankly outrageous. >> and it means that he is spending a lot of time watching television, watching fox news, and that's where he is getting his intelligence from and he is not leaning on the intelligence services who report to him. >> and this is part of the challenge of having a president

who frankly doesn't really like to read. a big chunk of how people get information when they are in government service is from reports and analysis that are combed through with a fine-tooth comb by your analysts and your agencies. so is he relying on in-person briefings? no, it seems like he's relying on unsourced television journalism. i hate to say this, especially in light of the trump white house's attack on the media, but this is exactly the type of unsourced journalism that is problematic and not holding a high standard to who your sources are. a conspiracy theorist is not an intel source. an intel source is somebody who is actually inside government, who has access to formation, anis sharing it under some confidential circumstances to help bring transparency to government. this is a type of sourcing that fox news is using to further a partisan agenda and it's not helping anybody in america in clarifying exactly what is going

on. >> and i wouldn't even say that it is journalism. judge napolitano isn't even a journalist, he's a commentator. i want you to listen to congressman adam schiff and he spoke about what comey may or may not be able to actually tell the committee in that testimony tomorrow. >> on the issue of collusion, he'll probably be the most limited in what he can share, but there's a lot he can tell us about the russian motivations for their intervention in our election, how the russians all ra operate in europe, what we should be on the lookout for. how they have used the natives of the foreign country where they're intervening and how they use paid social media trolls. >> is that good enough, jonathan capehart, having been so specific 11 days out from the presidential election and then three days out, is jim comey now in a position where he really ought to tell the american people more than just sort of

background operation of how the russians operate in europe? >> politically, yes. we have to keep in mind what congressman schiff was saying. director comey is going to be testifying in an open forum. and he is -- it's going to be as important to listen to what he says as what he doesn't say, because there are probably going to be questions asked of him that if he were in closed session with no television cameras around, with folks with security clearances that he would be able to answer forthrightly. when i'm watching the hearing tomorrow, i'm going to be paying very close attention to what he doesn't say. i'm going to be watching what comey said before the election but this situation with russian interference into our electoral process is extremely serious and they're being very, very careful. i mean we know about the stories about how delicate the situation

was and what president obama, you know, wanted to do, didn't want to do leading up because of the sensitivities, so be very mindful of what comey says and doesn't say in that hearing tomorrow. the other thing i want to point out, joy, what we have here with president trump and his relying on conspiracy theorists and putting angela america especially, chancellor merkel on the spot saying we're in the same situation being bugged by president obama, what the world is watching is one of the stalwarts of global security crumbling before our very eyes. >> the credibility of the white house. and yet i'll just note for our audience on the senate side, senators have asked one roger j. stone to preserve all documents related to russia, so the plot thickens. it will be the house tomorrow but the senate is still cooking as well. jonathan capehart will be back later. thank you all. next up, after stalling president obama's nominee for a

year, republicans are fast tracking their guy for the supreme court. stay with us. ♪ hi, i'm frank. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated... had talk to my doctor. she said, "how long you been holding this i" (laughs) that was my movantik moment.

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donald trump rolled out his supreme court nominee representred carpet style. now less than two months later, neil gorsuch will sit in front of the senate judiciary committee tomorrow. gorsuch is the favorite of the federalist society which is funded by google, chevron, the koch brothers and the mercer family. it is also a test case for democrats. will they block him the same way republicans blocked merrick garland more than 300 days. joining me is ari melber and sherrilyn iifill.

the legal defense fund has come out with its report on gorsuch. what are your findings? >> an exhaustive report, 70 pages for those who have the stomach for it but i suggest people take a look at our website. we went through over 900 opinions, including a number of opinions that were written by judge gorsuch, others in which he was a participant, and we concluded after reading this exhaustive record that we could not support and in fact must oppose judge gorsuch's confirmation on the united states supreme court. we were troubled by a number of different areas of judge gorsuch's jurisprudence, including, you know, an area of critical importance to us, and that is access to justice. the willingness to affirm or to allow courts to get rid of claims on motions to dismiss or summary judgmen before claimants have an opportunity to have their day in court.

his decisions in the administrative law area which have been talked about quite a bit. judge gorsuch holds a very strong and rather extreme, in fact to the right of justice scalia view about whether federal courts and particularly the supreme court should defer to agencies' interpretation of their statutory obligations. in the civil rights this affects the americans with disability act, it affects title ix, it affects the fair housing act. judge gorsuch is willing to go so far as to do something really extraordinary, even where he has a majority opinion on the tenth circuit court of appeals where he's been sitting. he has in a number of cases written separate concurrences to his own opinion, to essentially set forth his views about what the law should be. this is him as a tenth circuit judge recognizing he has to adhere to the supreme court, but when he doesn't agree, he writes a separate concurrence, almost like a mini law review article

about what he thinks the law should be. he's done this in the context of what i just described, whether federal courts should defer to agency interpretation, but he's also done it in the context of whether or not federal courts should abstain, sit back, not hear cases involving section 1983, which authorizes individuals to sue state actors for violations of constitutional rights under color of state law, a critical statute to civil rights claimants. and so all of this, plus his decisions in capital punishment cases and other cases have led us to conclude that we must oppose his confirmation to the united states supreme court. >> ari, there was a piece in slate and you heard that bill of particulars on neil go such, but there's this take that democrats have already given away their fund rental leverage which was their strongest argument was to say the nomination in and of itself is illegitimate because there was never even a hearing

from merrick garland so by even sitting in that hearing they're conceding the point that it's legitimate to even have him be nominated at all and they're saying the second point that she thinks they gave away is they're pinning their arguments against him on this idea that he's tied to big money. you've got that "new york times" piece saying he's tied to philip an schultz and they're pinning it on big money rather on what you just hear described. >> one thing we're hearing from a lot of legal experts and liberal advocates is democrats appear to have set themselves up to miss the opportunity to do what republicans did, which say it's not about whether you like merrick garland or not, it's about this larger legitimacy question. now, republicans were doing that, breaking a precedent. data shows that. we looked back in our legal unit

of the last ten nominees who did not personally withdraw, do you know how many got floor votes? nine, all but merrick garland, so this was as a matter of data a new precedent breaking thing the riepublicans did. the democrats, they said we'll see what happens in the hearing. there's the agency law issue, that's about government power. there's civil rights issues about when you basically use federal or court intervention to protect people. often that's people who are in classes that have been targeted, whether the that's black people or minorities or transgender. those are all big issues. and there's that very important thing about the concurrences because that goes to what happens when you take off the shackles. putting a federal appeals court judge on the supreme court is like taking a normal crime fighter vigilante and giving them a superpower. it's like going from batman to

spider-man. and we're going to explore this, what happens when someone gets that extra power, are they going be extra responsible or not. having said that, judge gorsuch's opinions are well reasoned, well crafted, he is rarely reversed. he is on paper not the stolen seat. >> to highlight the difference between the way the republicans do this and democrats do this, let's listen to chuck schumer talking about neil gorsuch and the core argument democrats are making. >> judge gorsuch may act like a neutral, calm judge, but his record and his career clearly show he harbors a right-wing, pro-corporate, special interest agenda. far too often he sides with the powerful few over everyday americans trying to just get a fair shake. >> and at the same time, this is

mitch mcconnell's argument, which isn't about the qualifications at all, he's essentially saying they're going to give this nominee his hearing because you just heard it conceded. . >> i'm going to give the democrats an opportunity to take a look at this nominee. he'll be meeting with everybody, he'll be having hearings, there will be ample opportunity to assess his credentials. i'm hoping at the end of the day they'll conclude this nomination should be given what we call an up or down vote, not stopped on a procedural. >> given the opposition of the ldf to this nominee, would it have been worth risking the nuclear option to say this is a stolen seat and democrats to stand down and refuse to participate? >> that's a political question that's above or below my pay grade. what i do think is that it's astonishing to hear mitch mcconnell say this. this is an unprecedented and ari has just described it, unbelievablooefbelievable usurpr

refusing to allow merrick garland to be voted on up or down. to come back months later and calmly pretend that dn't happen likes,'m goi to let the democrats assess this nominee. why, thank you very much, senator mcconnell. this is a democracy in which the entire senate has the obligation of advice and consent on supreme court nominees and they had it for merrick garland. that being said, i think it's important that people not just move past gorsuch's record. people have said he's such a great, respected jurist but he has a record that has to be rigorously examined and i hope the democrats and the republicans do so this week. >> we'll see if this was a political mistake on the part of democrats. unfortunately, we're out of time. thank you both very much. don't miss ari's amazing show "the point" today at 5:00 p.m. eastern. he'll host a two-hour special on the supreme court confirmation

clash. sherrilyn will be back with ari. up next, we attempt to decipher the elusive words of one donald trump. you don't want to miss it. what's the best way to get

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done! you gotta shake it! i shake it! glad i had a v8. the original way to fuel your day. he said very clearly, quote, wiretapping, in quotes. >> and don't forget when i say wiretap, those words were in quotes. that really covers -- because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff. that really covers surveillance. >> now you have to decide as i mentioned last week are you going to take the tweets literally. >> so does donald trump want us to take his words literally, seriously, figuratively, metaphorically or otherwise? truly that question of how we're supposed to interpret the country's chief messenger has been the subject of extensive debate since the general election. trump writes to us in 140 characters nearly every day. you know what helps us decipher the meaning of written words, punctuation, like quotation marks, which are meant to tell

us if one is quoting someone's words, referring to a poem or an article, being sarcastic or using the slang that all the kids are using these days. so let's see if that helps us understand trump. at 6:35 a.m. on march 4th he tweeted that obama, quote, wiretapped trump tower. now, there are quotation marks so is it slang, is it figurative, is it unclear? 30 minutes later he said obama tapped his phones specifically. he misspelled tap, dropped the quotes. confused yet? so is your elementary school grammar teacher and his friend. >> when people do this, i don't know what that means. i'm sorry. >> not using it right, joe. >> during his prime birther years, trump cited unnamed

sources to validate the lie that he told about president obama's birth place for years. he tweeted an extremely credible source has called my office and told me that barack obama's birth certificate is a fraud. >> hey, there you go. >> thanks. >> what if joey was president. >> maybe now we know the answer to that question. i don't think i did that right. i don't think that was right. up next, is trump betraying some of his biggest supporters? it's beautiful. was it a hard place to get to? (laughs) it wasn't too bad. with the chase mobile app, jimmy chin can master depositing his hard earned checks in a snap.

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i visited the hard-working coal miners in this state and they are hard working and they love being coal miners, and that's what they want to do. they're tremendous, hard-working

people who only want to be able to do their jobs, provide for their families and give power to this country. >> candidate donald trump had nothing but love for coal miners. but as president, he is sending a very different message with his latest policies. among the things on the chopping block in trump's new budget, the appalachian regional commission or arc which approves grants for hinges like infrastructure, community health initiatives and revitalizing communities affected by the loss of coal mining jobs. he is literally hurting the very people who elected him. according to reuters, 400 of the 420 counties that arc operates in voted for trump. after proposed budget cuts like this and trumpcare, will they now have buyer's remorse? jimmy williams joins me, krystal ball and perry bacon jor. pbj, you're a kentucky native.

are you detecting in the data any sense that trump voters in coal country are having buyer's remorse? >> you know, not so far. the polling is showing trump is about 44%, that's close to what he w in 2016. not so far. i would say that members of congress seem to think that there might be some problem here. there was a meeting on friday with some republican congressmen and president trump, and one of the members from alabama said to the president, you know, the way this insurance bill works, the replacement bill works is some of your people, donald trump, some of your people might have insurance costs go up, meaning older people between 55 and 64 who don't have -- who have insurance through the marketplace but whose premiums might go up with this new law. you're seeing the senators from west virginia, tom cotton from arkansas, rand paul are wary of this bill. i suspect one reason why is medicaid expansion has been huge

for those three states, arkansas, west virginia and kentucky, and it will be a huge loss of health insurance the way this bill is designed. so the members seem to think that this bill is dangerous for them in their states. >> absolutely. and joe manchin, krystal, has been making that point, that people may not understand necessarily that it was obamacare that got them health care but they'll figure out who took away from them if they lose it. this is joe manchin talking about the gop health plan on morning joe on wednesday. >> at first blush, i got hit three ways. i've got an elderly population, which are challenged financially, i've got poor people. i have more people percentagewise coming on the expansion than most any state. and then i have a horrible opiate addiction problem. every one of them got hit. every one of them got hit. >> and krystal, is that going to be a compelling argument? if you look at appalachia more

broadly, 31% poverty rate in 1960 but it's 16.6% in 2015. >> and west virginia and kentucky are two of the states that have benefited the most from obamacare and have the most to lose here. yeah, i think it is ultimately going to be a compelling argument. i grabbed -- i'm here in perry bacon jr.'s hometown of louisville and i grabbed the home newspaper and today on the front page they have an article about a trump voter from appalachia who voted for them because she was vdrawn to his vows about immigration and political correctness and now she's worried she's going to lose health care. people who voted for trump, it's going to take time for them to reassess their views. just because they don't instantly turn around and say we hate this guy doesn't mean that over time they're not going to realize he lied to them. he has absolutely from the very beginning betrayed what he's promised these voters he would do. very soon after election day, mitch mcconnell, the senator

here from kentucky, came out and said even if we get rid of the epa or change things with the epa, those coal jobs may not come back the way they used to be. so yeah, i think it's condescending to think that these voters aren't going to realize when you see art going away and the jauobs and infrastructure, when you see a healthe bill that's going to hurt hundreds of tusands of people in this region, people are going to know that they're getting screwed and reassess their support. on our side, we have to offer some alternative, but i think it's condescending to think voters aren't going to look at what's going on and realize that they were lied to. >> and one of the things, jimmy, that we've seen is donald trump trying to make the appearance of doing something for coal country. he signed i think the second thing that he signed was this bill that ended a regulation that actually prevented coal mining companies from dumping waste into streams, claiming that it's a jobs bill. but you're starting to see some inkling that some folks in coal country are figuring out that he cannot bring back coal jobs.

let's listen to a protester at a mitch mcconnell town hall in february confronting the senate majority leader. >> these coal jobs are not coming back and now these people don't have the insurance they need because they're poor. and they work those coal mines and they're sick. the veterans are sick. the veterans are broken down. they're not getting what they need. if you can answer any of that, i'll sit down and shut up like elizabeth warren. >> jimmy williams, did these folks' neighbors wind up being more compelling messengers than the democratic party? >> let's be clear, nothing a politician fears more than anything else in the entire world is not being re-elected, so mitch mcconnell, who won with 56% of the vote in a very overwhelmingly red state or commonwealth, he should probably listen to that woman and every other constituent in the commonwealth of kentucky. look, you mentioned the appalachian regional commission. that's 13 states. that's a quarter of the united

states. in president trump's budget, he zeros it out. yeah, that's great. now coal companies can put sludge into streams but he's getting rid of one of the actual real lifelines, the appalachian regional commission, and saying in his budget, no, i don't want that. we're going to get rid of it. guess what, congress is going to have something to say about that, joy. i would suggest to you that there are a large number of members on the appropriations committee who are republicans and they are not going to stand by this. >> rogers from kentucky. >> if i could, i spoke with that constituent, rose is her name who was ve who spoke with mitch mcconnell there. the source of her pain ith economic loss, but she also lost a loved one to the opiate addiction crisis, and this health care bill is going to potentially strip lots of people of the addiction counseling treatment that they need to get

well. so it does, it really hits this region incredibly hard. front page news here almost every week, really every week is what's going on with that drug addiction crisis. it is central to people's concerns here. the fact that donald trump would be cutting needed resources to help people deal with that and families deal with that is unbelievable. >> and very quickly, aca enrollment rate in west virginia 33,000 people. the medicaid expansion in 2015 added 175,000 people in west virginia. in kentucky, you had the aca marketplace enrollment 79,000. 439,000 people, perry bacon jr. signed up in kentucky. if that is taken away, does this wind up changing the politics of kentucky? >> i'm not sure about that. i covered that election in 2014 where mcconnell ran as the anti-aca candidate. he won. the governor won in 2015 as a republican. so i'm not sure. trump won by so much, and you have -- the appalachian region

of kentucky and west virginia and arkansas become, i would say cultural conservative places as well as economic conservative places. itard for me to see trump losing those statsd, but i do think politicians like rand paul or shelly moore in west virginia may say can we change the formula to make it a little more palatable for those states. >> jimmy and krystal will be back. thank you very much, perry bacon jr. coming up in our next hour, trump's baffling love/hate relationship with the media and a republican congressman comes here to sell trump-ryancare. we call it tryancare.

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of sunday afternoon reading, i highly recommend the reclusive hedge fund tycoon behind the trump presidency, a deep dive into the -- by "the new yorker" about robert mercer, patriarch of the uber rich family who helped donald trump ride into the white house on a tidal wave of cash and conspiracy theories. as the writer reports, the millions of dollars the mercers poured into that brought them decision-making rights on trump's campaign. we have them to thank for steve bannon, kellyanne conway and his cabinet. we may have the mersers to thank for the entire trump presidency. the bannon's opinion the mercers laid the groundwork for the trump revolution. irrefutably when you look at donors, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the kochs. joining me now is jane mayer, author of "dark money, the hidden history of the billionairesehind the rise of the radical right." jane, thanks for being here. >> so glad to be with you.

>> let's go through the mercer clan and talk about the father first, robert mercer. who is he, where did he come from and where did he get all his money? >> well, he made his money on wall street in a -- he's a hedge fund manager of a company called renaissance technologies that's considered one of the most secretive and successful hedge funds in the world. and he is a computer scientist and something of a math genius. but he's also really reclusive. he has said he'd be happy to go through his life speaking to no one and he'd rather talk to cats and spend his time with cats than people. so he's an unusual character to be so important in our country, because most people have no idea who he is. >> he and his daughter, rebecca, incredibly influential over donald trump. are the people behind them hiring steve bannon and kellyanne conway, big funders of breitbart. but his own personal views, you write about his racial views the following. merser for his part has argued

that the civil rights act in 1964 was a major mistake. he also said that the problem of racism in america is exaggerated. the source who spoke to him said that not long ago he heard mercer proclaim that there are no white racists in america today, only black racists. that sounds a lot like part of my twitter feed on occasion where people will come in, sort of trolls. is he a troll? >> he is an extremist. his politics are peculiar and extreme basically. way, way, way far right. he doe't believe there should be almost any government. and he has views that are much like sort of the more conspiratorial views that we see with trump. trump is not the only one in this group around him who has conspiratorial views. among the things that mercer has also said is on the record i've quoted someone and talked to two others to whom he said he believes the clinton literally murdered people.

and so this is -- i interviewed someone who knows a lot about these kinds of views and describes them as clinton crazies. he has said some things that are to me particularly alarming about nuclear war. he didn't think that it was such a problem to drop the bombs on nagasaki and hiroshima because actually it was good for the japanese health outside of the blast zone because he thinks that nuclear radiation is good for people. he just has, you know, views of people who are living in kind of a bubble and he's a very cut-off person. he reads things that reinforce his own philosophy. he discounts everything else. >> he sounds like donald trump. honestly. >> well, maybe there's a reason that the two of them came together. and one of the things that you learn when you've studied what this family, the mercers have been funding, is they have -- since 2012 in particular been

pouring money into trying to conduct a kind of warfare against the mainstream media so that they can put forward their own views instead and have the public think that the way they e the world is the right way to see the world. so they have, for instance, put millions and millions of dollars into major ownership share of breitbart news, which has become, as steve bannon calls it, the platform for the alt-right, the sort of new, particularly vicious right. and rebecca mercer, who is the daughter of the hedge fund manager, is very closely intwined in the running of breitbart. he reads all the stories, apparently, according to an insider i talked to and fly specks the typos and grammar and things like that. you have to believe it's somewhat to a large extent reflects their views. >> thanks to citizens united, they now have incredibly outsized influence in our

elections and in, as you said, trying to shape the country in their very odd image. jane mayer, thanks for being here. >> so glad to be with you. up next, trump's interview with bill o'reilly's sidekick. what happens next? nothing. only glad has febreze to neutralize odors for 5 days. guaranteed. even the most perceptive noses won't notice the trash. be happy. it's glad. managing my diabetes

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so when i need to book a hotel room, i want someone that makes it easy to find what i want. booking.com gets it. they offer free cancellation if my plans change. visit booking.com. booking.yeah. i enjoy your show, and honestly you've been so nice to me, that this is why i turn on the biggest shows on television and here i am. it's watters world. >> thank you very much, mr. president. >> jesse watters has come a long way since he was bill o'reilly's resident man on the street. he was the guy who was known for segments like his racist report from chinatown where he ambushed chinese new yorkers, some of whom were elderly and didn't speak english, mocking them with questions about whether he should bow to say hello and asking if they do karate, all set to the tune of the disco

tune "kung fu fighting." fox news gave him his own show and now he's gone from taunting unsuspecting pedestrians to interviewing the president of the united states. and he isn't the only tv host known for racially charged reports to get attention from trump after appearing on fox news. trump personally called to thank the blaze tv'smi lauren after she said nice things to him after she said nice things about him last month. joining me are gabriel sherman, e.j. dionne, co-author with me of "we are the change we seek, the speeches of barack obama", ajonathan capehart and krystal ball. donald trump and this idea of people being nice to him. and he needs people to be nice to him and deeply, deeply desires niceness. now he is limiting his interview avails to fox news's, the side

kick to bill o'reilly and tomi lahren. >> he was known for some of the most vicious, mean segments on the show. i think it's telling that trump has used his show to give an interview. i think what trump does is he's elevated a lot of alternative voices that never would really be a player in the media conversation, but they were nice to trump and, therefore, he's rewarding that coverage with interviews. >> he's rewarding that coverage but he's also, e.j., using fox news as an excuse for the lies that he tells. let's listen to donald trump blaming fox news for his lie about president obama. >> it's hard for me to believe that it came down by itself. i was gratified to see geraldo rivera investigating it. i am gratified to see that people across the board are interested. i think 20 years from now, people will look at 911 the way we look at the assassination of

jfk today. it couldn't possibly have been done the way the government told us. >> that's a different thing. that's andrew napolitano being a 9/11 truther on alex jones interesting radio show. but let's play donald trump. this is donald trump saying fox news is why he said that president obama wiretapped him. >> we said nothing. all we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. i didn't make an opinion on it. that was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on fox, and so you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to fox. >> the very talented lawyer you just heard being a 9/11 truther. let's listen to shep smith, who is a journalist over at fox news, said no, napolitano's claim is not true. >> fox news cannot confirm judge napolitano's commentary. fox news knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president

of the united states was surveilled at any time in any way. full stop. >> e.j. dionne, so they are both his place of refuge and his excuse. >> well, good for shepard smith. when trump loses fox news on a claim, he's got a real problem. i think we're seeing a couple of things here. one is trump will always refuse to take responsibility for anything. he made this wild and unsubstantiated charge against president obama. and rather than back off and just say i was wrong and apologize, he is trying to find anything that will justify what he said and then blaming the sources he cites for what he said. it was no one else but donald trump who sent out those tweets. the other thing you're seeing is donald trump trying to redefine fairness. after tomi lahren went on the air and said this man is doing something amazing. it was a totally fawning, loving

commentary on donald trump. he called her back and said thanks for your fair coverage of me. i think donald trump is trying to redefine fairness as laudatory coverage. everything else is fake news. and so what he's trying to say to people, and particularly to his base, is any media that challenge him, that ask questions, that try to hold him accountable is unfair and the only fair coverage is coverage that says i love donald trump. with his audience, i feel like that works. i think that he can get away with both blaming fox news for the things that he says because of the latter thing. as long as they are fawning over him, it doesn't seem like his base really cares about that distinction. >> i think that's right, joy, and i don't think it started with donald trump by the way. there's been decades-long efforts at fox news and elsewhere to discredit anything that disagrees with their point

of view. so it's not only that it's unfair, but it's illegitimate. it's fake news. and is is -- this is a very scary trend, because we do need independent validaters to stand up for what are facts and what are reality. and there are very few institutions left in the country that have a lot of trust with the broad slice of the american public. so when he goes and calls tomi lahren and goes on jesse watters, you can see for your average host what the success is in getting those goodies from the trump administration and of course that's going to change your coverage. so it is a scary trend. the other thing i want to mention here is it's very disturbing how many hours this president spends watching cable news. boy all reports he's watching the morning shows, three hours in the morning, he watches the press briefing every day, he's watching hours and hours of

primetime. that's upwards of eight hours of cable news every day. and while, obviously, we are all on cable news and we love what you're doing here, the president has got to run the country. so i'm not sure how he has time to do that when he's spending eight hours a day watching what the pundits are saying and then using that and taking it straight to the podium and taking it straight to the twitter. >> he's a cranky 70-year-old who essentially is no different than all the other viewers at fox news. he's in their demographic and watching them all day like their fans are watching them. jonathan capehart, the other thing that is being changed here is the cdibility not just of the president of the united stes but of the institutions that are connected to him. sean spicer, nbc news reported this week, after britain's gchq denied and called ridiculous the claim that it somehow helped to wiretap trump tower, sean spicer, the official spokesperson of the president of the united states, told reporters he does not regret those allegations at all, does not apologize for those comments. i don't think we regret

anything, he said, according to the pool report. in washington i think the other threat here is that that daily press briefing becomes meaningless because spicer is simply parroting the paranoia and lies of the president. >> you know, a reporter on another network friday night said something rather interesting about this whole thing about the apology to the british and then the denial of the apology from spicer in the briefing room. it made me wonder if government is running -- actually functioning without the full knowledge of the president. meaning the government should have apologized to the british for what was said and what was done. spicer should have done that. but because spicer in those briefings has an audience of one, everyone in this administration has an audience of one and that is the president of the united states who is watching the briefing as it's happening, they're constantly trying to please him.

spicer is trying to please him so that when he comes off the podium, he doesn't get his behind handed to him by the boss. this is not the way you run a government. this is not the way you run the foremost superpower in the world, the one that is supposed to guarantee the stability and the security of the world. and so at some point reality has to hit. the president has to hit sean spicer that you cannot run this country in this way. >> gabriel, it sounds almost the way fox news is run, that he's roger ailes. they're all just trying to please him and echo whatever he says no matter how absurd it is. they knowhat they either have to say whatever he says, repeat and try to get it into coherent words, or quit. >> when i wrote my biography of roger ailes and covered the trump campaign this last cycle, i did notice a lot of parallels. what is so fascinating is in the wake of roger ailes' exit last

summer, donald trump is essentially the head of fox news now. he is the executive producer, if you will, of both determining what stories get traction but then sort of being this feedback loop about hosts wanting to please him. that is fascinating. we've never had a president of the united states who is running essentially a major media organization. >> and e.j., should we be surprised or should we expect that at some point, then, the editorialish side of fox news will begin to say, yes, we will take responsibility. if trump wants to say it's our fault that he said that president obama wiretapped him, are they going to go along with what the boss is telling them to do? >> at this point i don't think so because -- i thought that shepard smith comment was important, but i think that with what jonathan said, we have a situation where you have some people in the trump administration who are working for him that are serious about governing, they have a past.

so they go out there and say the things that you expect people who are serious about governing to say, like we really don't want to alienate british intelligence because they help us a lot fighting terrorism and other problems in the world. and then you've got in the white house the president himself and the people enabling him who go off in a completely different place. and this is unsustainable, but trump may sustain it for a long time. and fox news, you can have different people saying different things. when it comes to communicating for the u.s. government and the american people, you can't really do that. krystal, at a certain point heould certainly -- he's being selective about who he's even feeding at fox news. he's not going on with shep smith, he's not going to go on with some of their reporters, he's going on with the ones where he's getting the feedback thaem that he wants. at some point, he also has

breitbart.com which is his other sort of in-house media outlet. >> sure, potentially. i don't think he -- he threatened fox news during the primary during the general election with not going on their air, and i think he might be willing to do that. but he has such big cheerleaders over there, that i don't think see them ever leaving his side, thinking of sean hannity and some of the others. i think it's safe to say, though, that none of us sitting at this table are probably going to score a trump interview, i hate to break it to you guys. >> we'd definitely like to have him on. he's welcome to come on "a.m. joy" any time. we invite him, would love to have a one-and-one. come on "a.m. joy" and we will talk, president donald trump. thank you very much -- i won't hold my breath. >> and you'll be very fair. >> i will be. it will be a great interview. you guys would watch that. >> absolutely. >> thank you, gabriel sherman, e.j. dionne and jonathan capehart. up next, you asked us to give you something to do.

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this week offered plenty of reasons why people feel the need to do something to fight trump. we saw a draconian budget with cuts aimed at popular programs like meals on wheels, the possibility that millions of americans will lose their health insurance and no sign trump will back down on his muslim travel ban any time soon. we here at "a.m. joy" want to help answers the questions many of you ask us which is what can i do? one thing you can certainly do is get involved in gubernatorial elections this year and next. these state level contests are

exactly where the post trump election resistance is heading. joining me now are three democratic candidates for governor. jim johnson, candidate in new jersey, former congressman tom periello in virginia and tom from florida. i'm watching "snl" which both i and president donald trump do every saturday. he doesn't enjoy it, he hate watches it, but i love it. i saw an ad for you. and that was an interesting choice that you made. why buy an ad in is the "snl" oy for the exposure but who came up with that idea? >> it was inspired at least in part by the fact that i served in government for a long time in the clinton years. in 1997, i was part of an snl weekend update. i was reporting on success rate in solving church arsons and we had doubled the rate for solving those problems.

so they decided on weekend update that they would include my report as a warning to those who want to start fires at churches. >> well, that's great. you would be, if elected, the first black governor of new jersey. >> that's correct. >> new jersey is the first sort of test whether democrats have gotten their act together electorally after the 2016 election along with virginia. are you guys organize e edorgan? can you win it? >> we definitely can win it or wouldn't be in it. >> how many are in the primary? >> there are more than four people. depending on who's counting and which day, six to seven. >> why should voters pick you? >> i am the fourth generation in my family to have grown up in new jersey and i'm raising the fifth. in the last seven years we have seen everything that ought to be up go down, like foreclosures, and i have lived through those problems. i was a kid who walked home one time and found a sheriff's notice on the door to sell our house. and as a result of that, it

became pretty clear to me that with the machine run the state and the needs of the people being ignored that someone needed to step up who could share experience, bring passion and effectively to get the job done. >> has chris christie's deep popularity and humiliation at the hands of donald trump, doesn't that make it so that democrats should be able to win that seat? he's deeply unpopular. shouldn't democrats be able to pick it up? >> because we have to respond to president trump as well, we need to put the best available athlete on the field and i think i'that peon. m, let me go to you on virginia. this is a big test of democrats and whether they have gotten their act together. why should you be the next governor of virginia? >> well, people are really excited right now to find someone who's both able to be fearless in resisting trump and his attacks on vulnerable communities but also has a positive vision of inclusive economic growth. i think people are really

concerned out there right now that the working and middle class haven't really gotten that shot. so standing for a living wage, standing for a debt-free pathway into community college and career and technical training programs, these are the things that can make a difference. i think it's important right now that democrats don't assume that everyone out there who's anti-trump is totally sold on the democratic party. we have to go out and earn those votes and earn that support from the indivisible crowd, from the march crowds and others by showing that we're actually standing up and fighting for economic opportunities for everyday folks. >> virginia has been more success. democrats in virginia has been more success. in resisting this red tide. you know, maybe give some secrets to democrats in some of these other states. why are democrats able to pull this off, because virginia of course is a southern state? >> well, i think it really is a testament to how much more progressive virginia has become and how much more diverse virginia has become that we were the southern state that was the firewall against trump. i think that's a really proud moment for those of us that are

from virginia. we've also been below 50% in the last three statewide races. so again, we need to make sure that we're giving people a reason to show up. when we stand for issues like criminal justice reform and breaking the school-to-prison pipeline, we see the fullness of the coalition that often shows up in presidential years but then sometimes disappears in off years, i think the answer to that is to actually be bolder in what we're standing for and give people a reason to show up. that's what we've been doing the last ten weeks. >> do you believe in base politics or persuasion politics? do they need to get out more of their own voters or convince trump voters to come across? >> i think in our case we need to do both things. ed gillespie, who represents everything trump voters hate about their own party, the corporate sellout of the elites to every day working folks, so i think we have a great opportunity this year both to turn out the fullness of our

coalition by running a truly progressive candidate who's been fighting to protect vulnerable communities, but also someone who has been able to win in the red parts of the state as i did when i represented the fifth district in virginia and go out there and show that. but i think the answer people are looking for is whether or not you've been willing to fight for everyday folks against special interests. and that's really more of the spectrum than the traditional one of right and left that people are looking for when they're making a decision to vote. >> so i want to put that map back up my producers had just a minute ago and shows the number of democratic versus republican governors. look at that red, republicans control 27 governorships right now in total. there are these two new jersey and virginia that are up, but i think in a way, those two are a little bit of anasr haul. democrats have been ableo full off statewide wins in those two states. let's come to florida. it's a special state. it has a lot of special aspects to it, one of which is incredibly low turnout when it

comes to gubernatorial elections and off-year elections. of course florida has never elected an african-american statewide, i don't believe, at all. why would you be able to change that? >> yeah. well, joy, you began this by asking what could people do. one thing they can do is visit andrew gillum.com and help us get liftoff for 2018. florida remains a 1% state. we're a state that barack obama won re-election by one point. the last several governors on the democratic and the republican side, the democrat lost by about one point. and we believe largely because we haven't been able to turn out the kind of voters that we need in order to put us over the edge. >> why not? is it something the democrats are doing wrong that they can't get these voters to vote in off years? >> it's a good question. i think we have to remind voters what's at stake. the truth is, is that in florida we got our dosage of donald trump long before the nation got theirs.

vis-a-vis or governor rick scott who refused to extend medicaid and health insurance to 1.5 million people. now we see at the federal level, the president is willing to strip 24 million people of health care coverage. that's stuff that shows up in everyday households that impact people, whether you're in a red county or a blue county in this state. democrats have to do a better job of going everywhere, talking to every voter and reminding every voter of what they have at stake and the fact that the democratic party is the party standing in the gap for them. >> let me let you listen to vice president mike pence, who was in jacksonville yesterday talking about obamacare. >> florida is actually a textbook example of everything that's wrong with obamacare. the truth is, florida can't afford obamacare any more and job creators in florida can't amped it either. >> do floridians not want the medicaid expansion and not want obamacare? >> well, unfortunately, the vice president was misinformed.

we actually not got the opportunity to experience the fullness of what came through obamacare. 1.5 million people who our governor just said good luck, figure it out. and what we need now is to remind them of what democrats can do to make sure that we're speaking up for issues that engage and involve them like health care, like wages that are livable. in fact work, that is work with dignity. we've had a governor who calls himself the jobs governor but celebrates low wage jobs and the ability to recruit call centers to this state. i believe we can build an economy in this state that works for people, that allows them to pay their bills and to take a vacation once a year. >> i just want to give you guys each, very quickly, andrew first to you, what does the democratic party stand for in one quick line. >> one democratic line is opportunity. we're a party that stands for opportunity gaugement for all people. >> tom. >> dignity and opportunity for

people. >> we're the party for the rest of us. >> jim, tom, andrew, thank you all very much. coming up, before republicans try to ram trumpcare through docongress, one of thei members is here to make their case. first, on saturday house rules committee chair pete sessions attempted to garner support for the republicans' plan to repeal obamacare during a texas town hall and here's a look at how that went. >> we are going to make the changes. we are going to pass the bill and we are going to repeal obamacare. >> vote him out, vote him out, vote him out.

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we're mourning the loss of two iconic americans who passed away this weekend in a political climate that is muddied, lines between real and fake news, we just lost one of the realist newspaper men in american journalism. legendary new york columnist jimmy breslin has died at the age of 86. the pulitzer prize-winner set a standard for literary journalism. at "new york times" reports in its obituary, more than 50 years of sharp and searing columns, he elevated the powerless. we also lost another icon. chuck berry is being remembered this morning as perhaps the most influential person in all of rock 'n' roll. the legendary musician died satuay at the age of 90 during a career tt spanned more than a half century. he became known for songs like "johnny b. goode," "roll over beethoven."

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you can see that under this plan, the plan that the house is expected to vote on this week, some americans will be worse off? >> well, that's not the plan. that is part of the plan. >> that's what they'll be voting on. >> you have to -- you have to put in place the entire plan and this is part of that plan. it's an important part because what it does is repeal obacare, repeals the taxes of obamacare. so it's an important part. it's a first step in this process. >> mark your calendars, everyone. thursday is the day house republicans plan to vote on the american health care act, trumpcare as it's called in the interwebs and the common parlance, which would repeal and replace much of obamacare. as the white house tries to woe republican votes, many americans are grappling with the fear of losing their health coverage and

the potential for rising premiums. according to a poll from the kaiser family foundation, 48% of americans believe the plan will result in fewer people getting coverage and 41% expect higher deductibles under the plan. joining me now is a pharmacist and support of the of the republican health care plan, earl buddy carter, a republican congressman from georgia. thank you very much for being here. i appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. >> all right. so let's start by asking you just about your district. how many people are currently uninsured in your district? >> well, we have quite a few who are uninsured, but keep in mind that in georgia, we did not expand medicaid. we were one of the 19 states that didn't expand medicaid and because of that, i feel like we're in much better shape for what's about to happen than maybe the states that did expand medicaid. but, you know, i'm excited. i'm excited about the fact that here thursday of this week, this upcoming week, we'll have an opportunity to put the free market back into health care, to get more competition, to get

more choices, to empower people so that they now will control their health care instead of this washington mentality of we know what's best and we're going to tell you what you need. so this is a historic week and this is very exciting, particularly for someone who practiced in health care for over 30 years. >> so you made the point that your state, georgia, did not expand medicaid. that is true. first of all, i'll answer that question for you that i asked. there are 111,640 people currently uninsured in your district, the first district in georgia. we just put that number up. if you then go and you expand that out to the entire state of georgia, which has a 13.9% uninsured rate, 52,000 people are currently eligible for medicaid in your state who are uninsured. 309,000 currently fall into the coverage gap. 122,000 people would be eligible for coverage under the aca marketplace, meaning 483,000

people additionally could be getting insurance right now if you guys had expanded medicaid. how can you say your state is better off when had your state expanded medicaid, hundreds of thousands more people would have insurance? >> the two worst things that obamacare did to the health care system was, first, they took the free market system out of the and we put able-bodied adults on medicaid. a safety net program that was never intended for age-bodied adults. medicaid is a safety net program that was intended for the aged, the blind, the disabled, children and mothers, not for able-bodied adults. >> sore you saying that your state, despite theac that you could have 483,000 more people who had health insurance coverage, meaning they don't have to get their health taken care of in the e.r. you're saying your state is better off because those people are uninsured? >> no, no. what i am saying is that help is on the way. >> help in what way for those

people? >> help is on the way. >> for people that don't have insurance, how are they better off? >> we have a plan that's going to be approved on thursday of this week that is the first phase of what we intend to do, and that is to put the free market back into health care where you have choices, where you have competition, where you have insurance companies who are actually competing for your service. >> hold on a second. let's talk about that for a moment. if you are somebody who is working. now medicaid, the expansion allows if you're up to 138% of the poverty rate, meaning you're at the poverty rate plus 38%, right, which is by definition people who are working, they're the working poor. they have jobs that may be part-time or hourly, so these are working people but they just don't get insurance from their employer or they can't afford insurance. if they don't have the money to buy insurance and you say they shouldn't get medicaid, how would they take advantage of all these new choices? they don't have any money. >> and you need to study the

plan. what we are proposing instead of taxing you for not having insurance now, what we are going to do -- >> we're not talking about those people, sir. hold on, hold on, hold on one second. we're not talking about the people in the individual marketplace who have the money to buy insurance and are being helped with subsidies. i'm talking specifically about this population that you said shouldn't be on medicaid, the 400,000 people in your state. these people are working, they are poor, they don't have the money to buy insurance. so how would giving them more choices help them if the don't have the money to buy any othe choices? >> first of all, i would question whether they are all working. >> if you're at 138% of the poverty rate -- >> they're going to be able to use them to buy insurance with. we're going to be offering that. we're giving tax credits for them to be able to buy insurance. >> let me stop again. if you are at 138% of the poverty rate, you can't panhandle your way to 138% of

the poverty rate, they're a working person. 138% of the poverty rate by definition is a working person, so they're working. they don't have enough money left over after they pay rent and feed their children to buy insurance. how does giving them more choices help them if they don't have any money? >> you're ignoring the refundable tax credit that we are going to be giving them that they can use to buy insurance. >> if they're at 138% of the poverty rate -- so you're saying they should wait until april finth of each year and in the tax refund they get, somehow, even though they can't do that now. >> that's not the way that works and you know that's not what we're proposing. what we are proposing is a refundable tax credit to pay for their insurance. >> let's say i'm working at mcdonald's. i'm taking home a very low take-home pay so i'm at or near the poverty rate. i don't have money to buy insurance at all. how would your plan help me get insurance? >> what our plan would do would

be to give you a tax credit that will be used to buy insurance for you. you're not going to have a gap there. you'll be covered. you'll have the opportunity and it can be used and that's the only thing can be used for is to buy insurance. >> let me give you an example because people in the gap at the medicaid rate fall in the gap that they're not eligible for those tax subsidies but let's could what the cms did, that's the center for medicaid serves, medicare and medicaid services. they looked at how your plan for affect someone in your district, in district one in georgia. a 60-year-old making $30,000, currently that person would be eligible for a tax credit under the affordable care act of $12,7 nien 90. under your plan they would get $4,000. so this person would get 69% less money, meaning $8700 less. how is that person better off? >> i do not think those figures are correct. i disagree with you on that.

i think that -- keep in mind -- >> if they're correct -- hold on. >> we don't have any choices here in georgia. >> sir, sir. >> we don't have competition and what we are trying to do is create a market that will give them choices. >> but hold on a second. hold on. >> the score told us premiums would go down. >> before we go to premiums, what i've just shown you here is not my opinion, is not my producer's opinion, this is the center for medicaid and medicare services. it's the federal agency whose job it is to -- or kaiser -- kaiser family foundation actually did these numbers. and i think they got the numbers -- >> that's not cms. >> these are from kaiser, my producers are telling me, kaiser faly foundation. they ran the numbers on your plan using a 60-year-old person who's currently eligible for the american -- the aca tax credits, the obamacare tax credit and found that they would lose $8,000. so if this person has $8700 less

money, less in tax credits but they have more choices of things to buy, how are they better off? >> one of the things that they're going to be better off is more competition in the market. >> even though they have less money to buy? even though they have less money to purchase them? >> even the cbo score told you that the premiums were going to be decreasing. so yeah, they'll be able to buy more with less because we're going to increase the competition. we're going to increase choices so that health care costs come down. >> so my producers, if you could put up the information on premiums because we actually looked at what the cbo said about what would happen with premiums. actually this is premiums under the affordable care act, sorry. but the cbo looked at you guys' plan and found that premiums would actually be higher. people would end up paying more. as a matter of fact, one of your colleagues in the senate, tom cotton, has said the same thing. so tom cotton looked at the same plan that you looked at and he said what we'd be looking at is people paying higher premiums with less money to pay for them.

>> tom caugotton did not look a the same plan. the cbo score said we would reduce the debt by $34 bin. we would save $880illion in medicaid. the cbo score said we would save $883 million in taxes. the cbo score was not all bad. there were good points in the cbo score. but what the cbo score did not recognize is the free market. i'm a believer in the free market. i'm -- i worked in the free market in health care for over 30 years. i've experienced it firsthand. i can tell you the more competition, the more choices you have, the better off you are. >> so we talked about the cbo score. the cbo said 22 million would lose their health care coverage under this plan, 14 million by next year, and that the way that that savings, as you said, the federal government would spend less money on health care under this plan. that is actually true, which would have some deficit-reducing benefits. the way that that would happen is that the federal government

would take more people off of medicaid. you would essentially stop the medicaid expansion in more states. that means fewer people getting health care. they have to now go to the e.r. and also giving about a $600 billion sort of gift to the insurance industry, allowing them to write off unlimited ceo pay. how is it better for the health care consumer for health care companies to be to write off $600 billion in ceo pay rather than spending that money on health care? >> what is better for the health care consumer now is that they will have choices. they will have competition. >> so you're okay with that ceo pay -- >> they can make decisions on their own, not having the federal government saying we know what's best for you and this is what you need. >> last question. on this issue of a mandate, which is something that you guys opposed in the affordable care act. under the plan that you support rather than paying a penalty to the irs, which is an average of about $695 to the irs for the average person on a silver plan

if they don't buy, in your plan they would have to be a 30% fine to an insurance company. >> joy, you know that's not true. that 30% -- which i don't agree with by the way, i think -- i think that we should remain silent on that at the federal level and let the states decide on that. but i do agree with it. i experienced it. when i was practicing as a pharmacist, i had medicaid mothers come in all the time. they want to get a prescription filled. i'd tell them you're not covered. they'd come back the next day and say i'm not covered, i paid up. they would game the insurance. >> so you think it's better that they pay it to the insurance company? >> no, but i don't think an insurance company should have to cover someone who is gaming the system by only paying when they need the product and not paying whenever they don't need the product -- >> last question. last question to you. last question to you. why do you suppose that another 12.2 million signed up for obamacare if it is in fact so

awful this year? >> obamacare covered 20 million people. 14.5 million were through medicaid expansion. >> right. and that enables them -- are you saying -- so are you essentially -- you oppose the concept of medicaid. you don't think that there should be a program -- >> no, no. no. come on, joy, you know that's not true. >> you keep on saying that we shouldn't have people on medicaid. >> by adding able-bodied adults to it. that's not the purpose. >> it's for the working poor to be able to get health care. how would it be better because people can't get health care? >> because the people who truly need it, the aged, blienld, the disabled, mothers and children, they will be able to use it. >> we think you don't believe somebody at 138% of the poverty rate should be able to get health care. that is stunning but that is your opinion. thank you very much. more "a.m. joy" after the break. (burke) at farmers, we've seen almost everything,

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joining me now to continue

this conversation on health care is evan siegfried author of "gop bps" and back with me are crystal ball. i hunted and pecked for and couldn't find it while we were on the air with the congressman his issue on premiums. he claims that under their plan, under the plan that paul ryan and donald trump support that premiums would go down, brookings as well as the cbo both looked at this question. brookings said the following. they said using the information they had they estimated that premiums would be 13% higher under the ahca than they are under current law. the cbo looked at the same information and they said average premiums for single-policyholders in the non-group market were 15% to 20% under the current law. that's actually not true. >> malarkey is what the congressman was saying. you have to be honest. it doesn't incorporate what president trump camp kachlded, something that is a pretty rational idea. >> right. >> to allow the free market to

increase competition and lower premium, but it doesn't do that. at the same time it imposes caps on coverage so for an insurance company to say you know, we don't like paying for that much chemotherapy, it eliminates mental health parity, so someone getting treated for drug addiction something that president trump has argued heavily inavor of stopping especially in appalachia. >> right. >> they can no longy receive coverage and protection under that. i don't understand how this bill will lower costs and even approach things when you look at it at the very end of the day it takes a top-down approach and the federal government says to the states your problem now, not ours. >> with less money. >> jimmy williams, the congressman only wanted to stick to this idea of we have to have more choices, we need to have more choices. what if you're a family who gets $8,000 less, he didn't agree with my numbers, but say you get $6,000 less in tax subsidies to buy insurance, could you answer the question of how would someone be better off if they

had two or three providers, but $6,000 less money? >> it's like being able to go into tiffany's on fifth avenue and you can't buy anything because you can't afford it. let's just call it what it is. i appreciate him talking about premium decrease, and i don't know of anyone that's decreased in the entire time i've been alive, and that's 50 years and he said medicaid is for the poor and indigent. you know what medicaid says it's for? it's what congress says it's for and now they'll reverse that. if you were buddy carter, this congressman from georgia i would go back and look at that cbo score and i would start going on tv and saying things that aren't outright, blatant lies to the american people and he has a huge number of people in his district that are uninsured and it's very simple how he can insure them, if he expanded medicaid a 90/10 ratio between the states and the feds and

georgia chooses not to do so. premiums don't go down. medicaid is for whoever congress says it's for and if the republicans pass this bill as it's writ own thursday then the people in georgia are going to find that they may have 13 insurersnd no one can buy insurance ifhey're poorer than other people. it's a fact. these are facts. >> crystal, it's confounding and difficult to have a conversation with somebody on this aca repeal because they seem to only have really two things that they think are important. number one, that the federal government spends less money, period, on health care, right? so they want to spend less money on medicaid. they want states to be able to get less money in medicaid reimbursement and not do the medicaid expansion, one of the big sort of showdowns between trump and paul ryan and the freedom caucus is they want the medicaid expansion to end immediately. they don't want it to go on at all and they want fewer people on it and there does seem to be a philosophical idea that there's something wrong with giving people who are the working poor access to medicaid. >> that's right. well, here's the problem that

republicans have. their fundamental belief on health care which is that it is a privilege and not a right is completely unpalatable to the people and especially unpalatable to many of the folks that put donald trump into office. so they end up in this bind trying to make an argument that their healthcare plan actually gives health care to everyone, but is consistent with their ideology that health care is a privilege and not a right, and so none of it ends up making any sense. look, i think they also made one of the mistakes that, frankly, democrats made when we passed obamacare. before say thisobamacare is a ga zillion times better than the plan they put forward and insures many more people, but rather than going for universal health care or even a public option we tried to cobble this coalition and came up with something that was historic and important, but doesn't completely solve the problem and it was hard and complicated for

people to understand. republicans, rather than doing what they actually want which is to get on to the business of any of the subsidies, to decouple health care insurance from employment which is an interesting idea which could be debated and to truly make it a sort of more free market system and if you can afford it, great, and if you can't, too bad, they try to come up with this breakfast thing that makes it very hard for anyone to defend. it doesn't solve any particular problem and almost all of the things that they complained about obamacare it actually makes it worse so the congressman is at a loss to actually be able to defend this thing. >> evan, is this going to sell with trump voters? because they're in the places that they're going to lose the health care the most. >> it is going to sell with trump voters right now, but i think republicans overall need to start recognizing that whethery woo like it or not that health care now is a right. basically under obamacare it has been established and you've seen the town halls and people have come out and been passionate about it and it's the same thing

with the tea party in 2010 when they were opposing it and republicans need to look at the second amendment and when they take it away, people get upset. >> "a.m. joy" will be back next week at 10:00 a.m. eastern and coming up at the top of the hour, can they have the democrats fumble? he's up next with the latest reaction. stay with msnbc. and you're talking to your rheumatologist about a medication... ...this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain... ...and protect my joints from further damage. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira w...block argeting specific sourc... ...of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. it's proven to help relieve pain and... ...stop further joint damage in many adults. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems,

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good day to you. i am jacob soboroff with you in the next two hours. it is high noon in the east and 9:00 a.m. out west and day 59 of the trump administration. new words from different sides on whether we'll hear something explosive from fbi director james comey tomorrow. no evidence of any collusion? >> no evidence. >> and this is after talking and getting this informatiro